MB&F Unveils the HM9 Flow

After nearly four years of R&D and anticipation, Max Büsser on Monday unveils his latest horological machine, the MB&F HM9 Flow, evoking a fantastical vehicle conjured from a childhood imagination fueled by vintage cars, aircraft, and sci-fi comic books, films, and TV shows.

Priced at US$182,000, Büsser’s boutique brand’s latest avant-garde design has benefited from solutions achieved with the preceding HM4, HM6, and Legacy Machine No. 2 (LM2), all of which gave this particular machine a head-start, even though it was still years in the making.

“Luckily for us, we mastered the double flying balance wheel concept on the Legacy 2, because if we had to start from scratch, it would have taken two more years,” he explains. “Because we spent so many years working on the LM2, which is one of the only movements with two balance wheels and a differential, we were able to take that into account.”

Then came transmitting the energy through conical gears to ensure precise engagement of the hour and minute hands on the dial, which is positioned perpendicular to the manually winding movement revealed at the center of the watch under a pane of clear sapphire crystal.

Engine of MB&F HM9 Flow
MB&F

Considerable legwork for the vertical time indication had already been done in the development of the HM4 Thunderbolt and the colorfully named HM6 Space Pirate.

“We were able to master two things that are super-complicated that we’d already done,” says Büsser, who works with independent watch designer Eric Giroud and an extensive roster of specialist “friends,” hence the company’s name, an acronym that stands for Max Büsser & Friends. “Actually, we are one of the only brands who have mastered those two particular characteristics of a movement.”

The curvilinear case recalls the hard-edged HM4 but with more of a rounded Jetsons aesthetic. Büsser recalls the old sci-fi comics that he lost himself in as a lonely “weird” boy in Switzerland, depicting people living on the moon or on Mars under glass domes.

Like most of his designs, HM9 simultaneously evokes both futuristic and retro sensibilities. He says that when he sketches his elaborate horological visions, he doesn’t really figure out where they come from until afterwards.

In this case, he recognized influences from late 1940s and early ’50s aerodynamic designs. And specifically, he saw telltale hints of the 1952 Mercedes-Benz W196 and the 1948 Buick Streamliner fused with the sleek snub-nosed De Havilland Venom plane that patrolled Swiss airspace for 30 years.

“In the days when they didn’t have wind tunnels, designers would create cars or planes to look fast, but they had no idea if they really were, because they had no methods to know it,” he says, pointing out that computer modeling and wind tunnels did not exist at the time. “Usually those cars or planes were objects that looked fast even if they were not moving. There was no efficiency to them, there was just this whole look.”

Achieving that look caused a number of headaches along the way. For the massive case, which spans 57mm at its widest point, they machined two large ingots of titanium inside and out until they had two skins they could seamlessly screw together for the effect of a monobloc case. But then came the challenge of water resistance, so they developed an unprecedented system of gaskets, for which they claimed a patent.

The large domes of sapphire glass that reveal the twin balance wheels on the back of the watch were the stuff of migraines. It took the manufacturer almost a year to achieve a prototype to MB&F’s satisfaction, so they decided to move forward. Then, only six months ago, the supplier said they could not replicate the results no matter what they tried, necessitating an emergency brainstorming session between engineers from the two firms to resolve the issues.

And even though they are purely aesthetic, the air scoops on the sides of the case were particularly frustrating. “Once we had the 3D prints of the piece, we felt it was missing something, it was too plain,” says Büsser, who then went through countless iterations of air scoop designs. “There is no reason to have air scoops in that piece, I just thought that they looked really cool.”

That MB&F cool factor is what has loyal collectors around the world excited about the latest release. The HM9 Flow is limited to 33 pieces each in two versions: the Air edition with a dark movement and aviator-style dial and the Road edition with a rose gold movement and speedometer style dial. And, in a move that is almost unheard of for watches at this level of rarity and complexity, MB&F is delivering the first 12 pieces this month.

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Latest In Penta Blog

MB&F Unveils the HM9 Flow

After nearly four years of R&amp;D and anticipation, Max Büsser on Monday unveils his latest horological machine, the MB&amp;F HM9 Flow, evoking a fantastical vehicle conjured from a childhood imagination fueled by vintage cars, aircraft, and sci-fi comic books, films, and TV shows.

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